In recent years, cyber-attacks are on the rise. The number of corporate breaches is growing exponentially and is led by hacking and malware. Generally, the entry point for many attackers (or hackers) is via end-user devices (e.g., a personal computer, smartphone, tablet, etc.) that are inherently vulnerable. Once an organization is infiltrated, data is usually compromised within days if not hours. The likelihood that the breach will be discovered within that time period is slim. This inability to detect an intruder gives attackers time to not only expose confidential information, but also destroy critical data.
Today, attackers are introducing more sophisticated attacks, for example advanced persistent threat (APT), in which an attacker may gain access to an organization's network and stay there undetected for a lengthy period of time, while the organization is trying to set a higher level of security countermeasures. Such attackers may seek to find a vulnerability of the organization to begin their attack and to gain reconnaissance.
To ensure the integrity of the data in an event of a cyber-attack, an isolated recovery solution (IRS) has been introduced. The IRS includes a backup storage system, which stores one or more protected copies of an organization's data, situated within an isolated environment. While the IRS may increase the protection of the data copies, it assumes that the software running on the backup storage system is uncompromised.